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Trout Fishing in America Shorty appeared suddenly last autumn in San Francisco, staggering around in a magnificent chrome-plated steel wheelchair.
He was a legless, screaming middle-aged wino.
He descended upon North Beach like a chapter from the Old Testament. He was the reason birds migrate in the autumn. They have to. He was the cold turning of the earth; the bad wind that blows off sugar.
He would stop children on the street and say to them, "I ain't got no legs. The trout chopped my legs off in Fort Lauderdale. You kids got legs. The trout didn't chop your legs off. Wheel me into that store over there."
The kids, frightened and embarrassed, would wheel Trout Fishing in America Shorty into the store. It would always be a store that sold sweet wine, and he would buy a bottle of wine and then he'd have the kids wheel him back out onto the street, and he would open the wine and start drinking there on the street just like he was Winston Churchill?.
After a while the children would run and hide when they saw Trout Fishing in America Shorty coming.
"I pushed him last week,"
"I pushed him yesterday,"
"Quick, let's hide behind these garbage cans."
And they would hide behind the garbage cans while Trout Fishing in America Shorty staggered by in his wheelchair. The kids would hold their breath until he was gone.
Trout Fishing in America Shorty used to go down to L'Italia, the Italian newspaper in North Beach at Stockton and Green Streets. Old Italians gather in front of the newspaper in the afternoon and just stand there, leaning up against the building, talking and dying in the sun.
Trout Fishing in America Shorty used to wheel into the middle of them as if they were a bunch of pigeons, bottle of wine in hand, and begin shouting obscenities in fake Italian.
Tra-la-la-la-la-la-Spa-ghet-tiii !
I remember Trout Fishing in America Shorty passed out in Washington Square, right in front of the Benjamin Franklin statue. He had fallen face first out of his wheelchair and just lay there without moving.
Snoring loudly.
Above him were the metal works of Benjamin Franklin like a clock, hat in hand.
Trout Fishing in America Shorty lay there below, his face spread out like a fan in the grass.
A friend and I got to talking about Trout Fishing in America Shorty one afternoon. We decided the best thing to do with him was to pack him in a big shipping crate with a couple of cases of sweet wine and send him to Nelson Algren?.
Nelson Algren is always writing about Railroad Shorty, a hero of the Neon Wilderness (the reason for "The Face on the Barroom Floor") and the destroyer of Dove Linkhorn in A Walk on the Wild Side.
We thought that Nelson Algren would make the perfect custodian for Trout Fishing in America Shorty. Maybe a museum might be started. Trout Fishing in America Shorty could be the first piece in an important collection.
We would nail him up in a packing crate with a big label on it.
Contents:
Trout Fishing in America Shorty
Occupation:
Wino
Address:
C/O Nelson Algren
Chicago
And there would be stickers all over the crate, saying: "GLASS / HANDLE WITH CARE / SPECIAL HANDLING / GLASS / DON'T SPILL / THIS SIDE UP / HANDLE THIS WINO LIKE HE WAS AN ANGEL"
And Trout Fishing in America Shorty, grumbling, puking and cursing in his crate would travel across America, from San Francisco to Chicago.
And Trout Fishing in America Shorty, wondering what it was all about, would travel on, shouting, "Where in the hell am I? I can't see to open this bottle! Who turned out the lights? Fuck this motel! I have to take a piss! Where's my key?"
It was a good idea.
A few days after we made our plans for Trout Fishing in America Shorty, a heavy rain was pouring down upon San Francisco. The rain turned the streets inward, like drowned lungs, upon themselves and I was hurrying to work, meeting swollen gutters at the intersections.
I saw Trout Fishing in America Shorty passed out in the front window of a Filipino laundromat. He was sitting in his wheelchair with closed eyes staring out the window.
There was a tranquil expression on his face. He almost looked human. He had probably fallen asleep while he was having his brains washed in one of the machines.
Weeks passed and we never got around to shipping Trout Fishing in America Shorty away to Nelson Algren. We kept putting it off. One thing and another. Then we lost our golden opportunity because Trout Fishing in America Shorty disappeared a little while after that.
They probably swept him up one morning and put him in jail to punish him, the evil fart, or they put him in a nuthouse to dry him out a little.
Maybe Trout Fishing in America Shorty just pedaled down to San Jose in his wheelchair, rattling along the freeway at a quarter of a mile an hour.
I don't know what happened to him. But if he comes back to San Francisco someday and dies, I have an idea. Trout Fishing in America Shorty should be buried right beside the Benjamin Franklin statue in Washington Square.
We should anchor his wheelchair to a huge gray stone and write upon the stone:
Trout Fishing in America Shorty
20¢ Wash
10¢ Dry
Forever
Richard Brautigan
Trout Fishing in America
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